Joe Lieberman: “Mr. President, it has been an honor and a pleasure to participate in this bipartisan group to achieve a balanced budget.…”

“Mr. President, it has been an honor and a pleasure to participate in this bipartisan group to achieve a balanced budget. This group has been meeting for nearly 6 months in an effort to come up with a budget that balances in 7 years. We started with the premise that coming to balance in a bipartisan way is not an impossible task. But, it certainly was painful at times. The cost of not pressing ahead to come to balance will hurt even more in the long run. And I very much believe the economic benefits of trying to come to balance make those tough decisions about slowing spending that much easier. I am particularly pleased with the efforts this group has made to address the growth in entitlement programs in both the short and the long term. Some of these changes will produce no savings in the 7-year budget window we are talking about. But they are much needed reforms and they will save a lot of money in the longer run. The package we are discussing here today contains smaller cuts in discretionary spending than any of the other major budget balancing plans that have been presented to date.”